Halloween Costumes Essay
Although Halloween is long gone and the time to stuff your face with turkey and be grateful for what you have is here a controversy among college campuses and their students wearing certain Halloween costumes has raised racial issues that still remain. For years, college campuses have demanded their students to refrain from wearing “offensive” costumes and to keep in mind minority students that could possibly be offended by these costumes. Cultural appropriation has taken a role into the college’s reasons for advising their students to avoid wearing “culturally unaware and insensitive” costumes. This past month there has been significant racial tension in the prestigious Yale campus. They university’s International Affairs sent an email
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to the student body asking to steer clear of outfits that had feathered head pieces, turbans or black faces. A faculty member, Erika Christakis, emailed her students in behalf of those that were “frustrated” by the universities request. Although in her email she did make a point about freedom of expression and what this country stood for.
But in her attempt to balance freedom of speech and protecting students from being personally offended she herself offended many with a comment she made in her email: “To be a student of color on Yale’s campus is to exist in a space that was not created for you.” In turn, this created an even more heated debate among students and her husband, Nicholas Christakis, another faculty member in Yale. Students demanded that he apologized for his wife’s comments. The issue of racial discrimination in college campuses is nothing new but there is an even bigger presence among ivy leagues. For minority students it is already hard enough to fit in with the rich and elite students that attend these prestigious schools. The debate of Halloween costumes has sparked the controversy of race issues. Not only has there been problems in Yale, but a dozen of black football players at the University of Missouri threatened to boycott school athletic activities unless the president of the university resigned.
Penn students protested as well as stood in solidarity with students from Mizzou and Yale protests. They demanded that Penn increased the number of black faculty members they have as well as a “mandatory racial awareness curriculum”. The fight to end racism around the world is ongoing; it will and is a tough fight. But one thing that ivy leagues and college campuses around the nation have to keep in mind is that our community is shaped with different backgrounds, different beliefs and different
cultures.
to the student body asking to steer clear of outfits that had feathered head pieces, turbans or black faces. A faculty member, Erika Christakis, emailed her students in behalf of those that were “frustrated” by the universities request. Although in her email she did make a point about freedom of expression and what this country stood for.
But in her attempt to balance freedom of speech and protecting students from being personally offended she herself offended many with a comment she made in her email: “To be a student of color on Yale’s campus is to exist in a space that was not created for you.” In turn, this created an even more heated debate among students and her husband, Nicholas Christakis, another faculty member in Yale. Students demanded that he apologized for his wife’s comments. The issue of racial discrimination in college campuses is nothing new but there is an even bigger presence among ivy leagues. For minority students it is already hard enough to fit in with the rich and elite students that attend these prestigious schools. The debate of Halloween costumes has sparked the controversy of race issues. Not only has there been problems in Yale, but a dozen of black football players at the University of Missouri threatened to boycott school athletic activities unless the president of the university resigned.
Penn students protested as well as stood in solidarity with students from Mizzou and Yale protests. They demanded that Penn increased the number of black faculty members they have as well as a “mandatory racial awareness curriculum”. The fight to end racism around the world is ongoing; it will and is a tough fight. But one thing that ivy leagues and college campuses around the nation have to keep in mind is that our community is shaped with different backgrounds, different beliefs and different
cultures.